GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly sunny, maybe a tad warmer than yesterday. With high pressure still in control for another day, we'll reach the mid 40s under mostly clear skies, with calm winds from the east. The biggest weather feature of the next day or so is how very dry the air is—an issue especially toward the south, which largely missed out on the scant rain that fell earlier this week. "This could lead to high fire danger and any ongoing or developing fires could have very active fire behavior," the weather folks say. Tonight: low 20s.Eye-catching... But very different from one another.
An explosion of red as the setting sun filtered through a Japanese maple in Sharon, from Kit Hood.
And this soulful gaze over the fence at McNamara Dairy in Plainfield, from Alice Eberhardt.
Time for Dear Daybreak! In this week's collection of readers' short posts about life in the Upper Valley: Barbara Woodard on the gift from the American people that is the walk along Buzzell Bridge Road in Thetford; Danny Dover reflects poetically on nearly skiing over a moose; Robin Osborne tells us about being a poll observer in Lyme last week; and Stephanie Seacord points us to a non-book "little-known gem" of the Upper Valley at Dartmouth's Rauner Library.An arts look ahead. "Sorry to interrupt what remains of the lull before the winter holiday season with news of . . . the winter holiday season," Susan Apel writes in Artful. But there's good stuff coming, and you don't want to find it all sold out before you get there. For instance: Disney's Beauty and the Beast opens for previews next Wednesday at Northern Stage; City Centre Ballet's annual Clara's Dream will be back at LOH—and this year, Clara's Tea is back after a pandemic hiatus. Plus: the Vermont Almanac Vol. 5 is coming soon, the Norwich Bookstore's got Book Angels going, and don't forget the 19 Days!Maybe a snow look ahead? Killington announced yesterday that it's opening... why, today. At least for season pass holders; the general public gets to check it out tomorrow. The newly independent mountain has been making snow since temps dropped earlier this week. "We will continue to make snow whenever possible over the next couple of days," it says in its announcement. "Please note that early season conditions exist, and skiing and snowboarding will be on advanced terrain only." Other large VT areas are hoping to be open by Thanksgiving, with smaller areas aiming for December.SPONSORED: Granite Staters! Make your voice heard! The Upper Valley Lake Sunapee Regional Planning Commission has begun its Regional Plan Process, and we need your input to guide the project. Just as your town develops a Master Plan, UVLSRPC develops a Regional Plan that covers all 27 towns and cities in the Upper Valley-Lake Sunapee Region. It is important to make your thoughts known. The survey should take 15-20 minutes to complete and will be open through 12/31/24. Look for more events and public outreach in 2025! Survey at the burgundy link, more info here. Sponsored by UVLSRPC. Tunbridge trails case "would have an enormous impact on just about every corner of the state.” That's Ted Brady, who runs the VT League of Cities and Towns, talking with VT Public's Howard Weiss-Tisman about the long-running legal battle over whether the town or the landowners control maintenance on a public trail that runs across private property. If you've been wondering about the face-off with Tunbridge and trail bikers on one side, and landowners John Echeverria and Carin Pratt on the other, Weiss-Tisman covers the case's history, what the sides say, and what a resolution might mean.Autopsy results say man at center of Plymouth NH standoff last week died by suicide. Kevin Steinfeldt, 58, owned the Federal House Inn, where the incident near the Plymouth traffic circle shut down NH Route 25 and a nearby school last Wednesday. After nearly 10 hours, it ended early last Thursday morning, after police apparently shot Steinfeldt, who had barricaded himself inside, and who was identified by the NH AG's office on Tuesday. In an autopsy report released yesterday, authorities say that the cause of death "was a single self-inflicted gunshot wound," though Steinfeldt was also hit by police bullets.Put those dollar bills away: NH Exec Council votes to make Bedford tolls all-electronic. The heavily used I-93 tolls have been a hybrid, with both cash and E-ZPass lanes. But after a 3-2 Executive Council vote, reports Charlotte Matherly in the Monitor, the toll plaza will join its brethren in Dover and Rochester and take away the cash option—drivers without transponders will have to pay up online. The councillors who backed the move cited traffic flow, emissions, and safety. Gov. Chris Sununu favored the status quo: “Some people don’t want a transponder," he said. "They want to pay cash."Though Kelly Ayotte campaigned to continue Chris Sununu's policies, there are differences on the environment. Notably, writes Claire Sullivan in NH Bulletin, the state's next governor stood in front of Forest Lake in Dalton, where Casella wants to build a landfill, and declared, "Not happening on my watch." Sununu, on the other hand, supported the landfill when he campaigned two years ago. Meanwhile, Sununu was a vocal supporter of offshore wind; during the GOP primary, Ayotte said proposals for the Gulf of Maine "don't make sense to me." Sullivan goes into the details.What lies ahead in the VT legislature: "I'm personally hitting the reset button on everything." That's Democratic Rep. Matt Birong, who won re-election last week by 20 votes. Dems still hold their majorities in both houses, but as Kevin McCallum writes in Seven Days, results that "exceeded even the Vermont GOP's most optimistic projections" have thrown everything up for grabs, including leadership and legislative priorities. He takes a look at the continued tit-for-tat between Gov. Phil Scott and legislators over who's responsible for leadership and where things may be headed on legislation.
Among other things, there are Democratic leadership battles in both chambers. As you may remember, House Speaker Jill Krowinski has drawn a challenge from Dover independent Laura Sibilia. And now, reports McCallum, Chittenden County Democrat Kesha Ram Hinsdale has announced she's taking on Windsor County Democrat Alison Clarkson for the Senate majority leader's post Clarkson now holds. “Vermonters are asking us to do more listening and less lecturing,” Ram Hinsdale wrote to colleagues. Clarkson tells McCallum, "We all need to be better at messaging our values and the policies we support and distilling them and making them understandable in lay terms."
Maybe the biggest issue the new legislature will face is what to do about school funding, which has been the force driving rising property taxes and many voters' affordability concerns. In VTDigger, Ethan Weinstein looks at how the issue is playing out, with both GOP and Democratic senators showing support for the idea of a “foundation” payment to school districts based on student numbers. Meanwhile (you catching a theme here?) Dems say they want detailed proposals from Scott, while Scott's people say he's provided them and they've been ignored.
Think of it as a one-year health insurance sale. If you get your insurance through Vermont Health Connect, anyway. As Lexi Krupp reports for VT Public, the state is eligible for federal subsidies that—if Vermonters shop around—could actually get them better coverage at lower out-of-pocket monthly premium costs. Even though both BCBS and MVP, the two insurers on the exchange, raised rates: 14 percent for MVP, and 20 percent for BCBS. The catch: the subsidies expire at the end of next year.Getting out for winter. Up above, Susan Apel outlined a few upcoming Upper Valley events for the season. Seven Days, meanwhile, looks statewide—though they start close to home, with what is now called the Stiffel Killington Cup—Mikaela Shiffrin and the rest of the world's best alpine skiers will be back at Killington starting the day after Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, for your calendars: Brattleboro's Harris Hill Ski Jump Competition will be Feb. 15-16. Also coming up: St. J First Night and Burlington Highlight, both New Year's Eve; the Stowe Winter Carnival; and sled dog races on the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail.Well gosh, there's hope for this world yet. Art Garfunkel to The Times (of London): "I actually had lunch with Paul [Simon] a couple of weeks back. First time we’d been together in many years. I looked at Paul and said, 'What happened? Why haven’t we seen each other?' Paul mentioned an old interview where I said some stuff. I cried when he told me how much I had hurt him. Looking back, I guess I wanted to shake up the nice guy image of Simon & Garfunkel. Y’know what? I was a fool! We’ve made plans to meet again. Will Paul bring his guitar? Who knows."Got wanderlust? Atlas Obscura's got ideas. In particular, they're just up with a set of themed "top ten" lists of places that are definitely off the beaten track but will get you dreaming, including: 10 optical illusion destinations; 10 places that will make you believe aliens are real (including a phone booth in Arizona and a supposed alien gravesite in Texas); 10 places that smell like nowhere else (Paris Museum of Sewers, anyone?); 10 places to wait out the end of the world; 10 bathrooms to pee in before you die (seriously, like Hundertwasser's public toilets in Kawakawa, New Zealand). And more, believe it or not.
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it stick around by hitting the maroon button:
We may be the middle of nowhere to everyone else in VT and NH, but
we
know what's good! Strong Rabbit's Morgan Brophy has come up with the perfect design for "We Make Our Own Fun" t-shirts and tote bags for proud Upper Valleyites. Plus you'll find the Daybreak jigsaw puzzle, as well as sweatshirts, tees, a fleece hoodie, and, as always, the fits-every-hand-perfectly Daybreak mug. Check it all out at the link!
With Boodman on fiddle and McLane on accordion and piano, the veteran pair will be giving a free lunchtime concert of French-Canadian music in the Bach Room at Upper Valley Music Center in Lebanon. Starts at noon.
Georgetown U international affairs prof Paul Miller, who worked at the CIA as an intelligence analyst and on the National Security Council staff as director for Afghanistan and Pakistan, will talk about the future of American foreign policy and the international order after the 2024 presidential election. Haldeman 41, 5:30 pm.
With Ham Gillett of the Greater Upper Valley Solid Waste Management District, sponsored by Sustainable Woodstock. 5:30 pm, online only.
With four Vermont Symphony musicians—Brooke Quiggins-Saulnier and Jane Kittredge on violin; Stefanie Taylor on viola; and John Dunlop on cello—the program includes selections chosen by six lucky audience members at previous Jukebox concerts. Program includes works by Rhiannon Giddens, Stevie Wonder, the Turtle Island String Quartet, and others. 7 pm.
Only this time, he's talking about his novel,
Now Look
. It draws on his own experiences with addiction to trace the decades-long friendship in the Maine woods between Ivy-League-educated George Mayes and semi-literate woodsman and logger Evan Butcher. "I feel an impulse to write which can be almost catastrophic," he said on VT Public in June. "And I don't know whether it's because I hear time's winged chariot behind me, but I've never felt the impulse to write more keenly than I do right now." 7 pm.
VT-based Grateful Dead expert and channeler Nugent will be joined this time by two longtime members of the Jerry Garcia Band, Sunshine Garcia Becker and Cheryl Rucker, for "an acoustic evening of songs and stories gathered from decades on the road." 7:30 pm.
The Maine-based indie rock/Americana/country band—led by Luke and Will Mallett—covers a lot of territory, both geographic and musical: One Texas mag called them “New England’s wildly eclectic crew of genre rebels.” 7:30 pm.
Smither's 80 now, a long way from his roots in New Orleans learning to play his mother's uke and his early days in the Cambridge folk scene. He's returning to the opera house with his latest album, All About the Bones, out in the world, and the band that helped make it, The Motivators. 7:30 pm.
Led by Knoelle Higginson, the choir's concerts are always joyous, soaring affairs. May be sold out, but it's always worth calling for tickets (
603.646.2422)
, or even just showing up.
There's storyteller and sex educator Cindy Pierce talking to parents and educators about how to support teens as they try to navigate social media, online porn, and hookup culture; there's last Friday's deliberations by Lebanon High School students as VT Law and Grad School President Rod Smolla argued both sides in a mock Supreme Court session on the proposed TikTok ban; and there's VT Cartoonist Laureate Tillie Walden talking at JAM on indie comics, graphic novels, queer identity, the creative process, and the power of visual storytelling.
And for today...
It's pretty impossible to describe the French band Lo'Jo. Founded in 1982 by singer-songwriter Denis Péan and violinist Richard Bourreau, they're troubadours with roots in French song, only they draw their influences from all over—as Womax puts it, "an angelic French tribe roving the world." Péan once said, "Our music is an anarchic garden we try to cultivate so as to make it both beautiful and wild. We are like farmers: we play with time.” And with harmonies (notably, sisters Nadia and Yamina Nid Al Mourid). And with visuals,
See you tomorrow.
The Hiking Close to Home Archives. A list of hikes around the Upper Valley, some easy, some more difficult, compiled by the Upper Valley Trails Alliance. It grows every week.
The Enthusiasms Archives. A list of book recommendations by Daybreak's rotating crew of local booksellers, writers, and librarians who think you should read. this. book. now!
Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.
Want to catch up on Daybreak music?
Want to catch up on Daybreak itself (or find that item you trashed by mistake the other day)? You can find everything on the Daybreak Facebook page
, or if you're a committed non-FB user,
.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editor: Jonea Gurwitt About Rob About Michael
And if you think one or more of your friends would like Daybreak, too, please forward this newsletter and tell them to hit the blue "Subscribe" button below. And thanks! And hey, if you're that friend? So nice to see you! Subscribe at no cost at:
Thank you!